[rpd] RPD : Prolicy proposal "Internet Number Resources review by AFRINIC" informations update

[Marcus K. G. Adomey]

________________________________
From: Melvin Cheng <melvinc0730 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2019 9:15 AM
To: rpd at afrinic.net
Subject: [rpd] RPD : Prolicy proposal "Internet Number Resources review by AFRINIC" informations update

Hi

The debate over this policy has been for ages. I really think that if an issue has been discussed over and over again, there must be something fundamentally wrong about it. It’s quite obvious that this proposal draws way more controversy than the others - its own existence in a way seems to be a source of extreme disputes among the community, as we have seen in Tunisia. I was in fact there myself.

This policy has a lot of problems. Intrinsically, as a policy itself, it is not well defined. A lot of terms remain unclear. For example, as Owen has also pointed out earlier, the term “annual meaningful report” is an ambiguous term. What is a “meaningful” report? To whom? What are the factors? How is “meaningful” defined? 100 people can have 100 definitions of “meaningful”. If the report is deemed as something crucial to this proposal, then the author shall better define and address it. Honestly speaking, although this proposal has been “re-proposed” over and over, I do not see any improvements in it. More precisely, I barely see any changes made in the new proposal when comparing to the previous one. I would expect the authors to make some adjustments when so many issues have not been addressed in previous meetings before they posted them again, even just as gesture of their sincerity. You can’t just post something that’s almost identical by pretending your audience were blind.

On the other hand, this policy is not realistic at all. Afrinic does not have the financial power to conduct such a big quantity of reviews within its regions. It’s quiet easy to imagine that because of this lack of financial backup, reviews are done unfairly and unjustly. For example, some users are screened while the others are not because Afrinic runs out of money during the process of review. This may, at the worst, can lead to Afrinic’s bankruptcy, which I am sure none of us would wish that to happen.

The other is the potential of end-users being disconnected due to the review. I think we have to bear in mind that, end-users have no clue about the review. However, according to this proposal, if an ISP is found to have violated the rule (ie, inefficient utilisation of resources), their IPs will be taken back by Afrinic and re-allocate to others. End-user will lost connectivity to the Internet during this process even they have no idea what is going on. This is unfair to them. After all, connectivity to the Internet shall come as the priority over any other things. What this policy will bring is quiet the opposite.

Having said so much, I think my stand is quite clear. This proposal is not well drafted and the authors haven’t well considered its potential problems. It’s impractical when considering Afrinic’s current situation.

Let’s not forget about this. if something has been doubted by people over and over again, there must be something wrong about it.

Cheers
Melvin
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